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I'm getting cleaner welds and grooving them with the burr is paying off as well. A lot of them are still ugly round beads like a poor boob job but the others are looking homogenous and smooth. Just need a lot more practice.

I don't use chemical cleaners for such things. Normally with some patience I'm able to get all of the oil out of a casting prior to welding with my trusty O/A torch and grinders (mostly the die grinder).

You predicted this would be a difficult learning project You were right.

Initially it went well with the big messes and holes being closed up OK. Ugly but OK.

From your comments I learnt of the HAZ and am starting to think of that because it's probably where I'm suffering now.

I am grinding, drilling, welding, repeat, chasing cracks and pinholes. I just can't get ahead of it.

After the frustration of this evening I noted the flange was getting even more warped so I said a good normalizing was needed. Thusly I coated the whole pan with soot and burnt it off ala Fournier so maybe there will be less stresses in the metal tomorrow? I'll put it into the Phosphoric acid in the morning too.

I can't remember a thing from college Thermodynamics beyond Body-Center-Dot. Do I need to go back to school again to get this done?

From your comments I learnt of the HAZ and am starting to think of that because it's probably where I'm suffering now.

After the frustration of this evening I noted the flange was getting even more warped so I said a good normalizing was needed. Thusly I coated the whole pan with soot and burnt it off ala Fournier so maybe there will be less stresses in the metal tomorrow? I'll put it into the Phosphoric acid in the morning too.

Excelllent idea and so obvious. I've got one on the stand ten feet away.

I am clamping it to the steel benchtop and the normalizng took some of the curve out. The cracks look just the same after stop drilling. If I weld one side they merely migrate to the other side. I pondered gasketing the pan to the bench and putting argon into the pan, presumably at the same pressure as the torch but I would have to vent it so as not to overpressurize. That however, is not the root problem here.